Your Wireless Network: Signs That the Tail has Begun to Wag the Dog

In many companies, the wireless capability added on to their enterprise network a few years ago has become some employees’ primary network.

It’s a development that signals just how quickly mobile devices are proliferating the workplace. The so-called “consumerization of business” changes the way we work — and our data networks have to keep up.

This transformation has been in the works for a while. In 2011, market analyst firm Gartner predicted 80% of corporate wireless network technologies would be obsolete by 2015. Gartner may well be right, given the findings of more recent research.

Mobile IPv6 data traffic will be 73 times greater (at 6.6 exabytes per month) than it was in 2013

These astonishing numbers would be higher still if not for all the mobile data traffic — 45% of the global total by Cisco’s count, or 1.2 exabytes per month last year — offloaded onto fixed networks via wi-fi or femtocell. By 2018, that amount will balloon to almost 17 exabytes per month.

Signs of strain

No doubt about it: unless you live on the bleeding edge of wireless technologies, your network will be feeling the strain soon, if it isn’t already. Here are some signs to look out for:

BYOD. Your network connectivity and performance are slipping, but you don’t know what mobile devices, or how many, employees are introducing to your network, and whether they adhere to your bandwidth usage policies.

Rogue users and devices. You don’t know what’s in your airspace or on your network, and you can’t tell whether rogue devices are compromising your wireless network security or data.

Access point hassles. Users complain about poor wireless connectivity or interruption of service, but you don’t know if the problem concerns the number of wireless access points or where they’re located or…?

Who’s using all that bandwidth? You don’t know which apps are being accessed or by whom.

Next time, I’ll take a look at some of the wireless technologies and solutions that can help your enterprise embrace this brave new mobile world and thrive in it.